Music: Drive-By Truckers' Mike Cooley cruises solo

By Jay N. Miller/For The Patriot Ledger

Thursday

Nov 29, 2018 at 3:33 AM

"I don't do light-hearted," said Mike Cooley with a rueful sort of chuckle. "I don't feel good about writing a song if I don't have something to say. But you've got to remember, there are still plenty of subjects you can write about without always going into topical things."

Cooley is best known as the lead guitarist and one of the main songwriters in the Drive-By Truckers, and he's about to embark on a solo tour through Christmas. Incredible as it may sound, Cooley will be performing his first-ever Boston solo gig on Tuesday at City Winery in Boston.

Cooley's comment about "light-hearted" material came while we were discussing "Kinky Hypocrite," from the Drive-By Truckers most recent album, 2016's "American Band." The tune is a raw, roadhouse boogie number, which takes a jaundiced look at television preachers and their ilk, with its chorus "the greatest separators of fools from their money party harder than they like to admit ..."

Obviously that song's humorous surface contains a more meaningful core, but on that Truckers' album, widely acclaimed as one of 2016's best, it is perhaps the closest thing to light-hearted. "American Band" was the album where the Truckers' writing became more topical, although they'd always taken an unvarnished eye to the mores and history of their beloved South. If you wanted to point to a sort of mission statement for the band, whose two writers grew up near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, you could look at 2001's "Ronnie and Neil." That tune examines the supposed 1970s feud between Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd's Ronnie Van Zant, after Young's excoriating "Southern Man" was countered by Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama." In fact, as the song details, both rockers were fans of the other, became friends, and agreed on most of the issues addressed. The tune's last line is simply "rock stars today ain't half as real ..."

The Drive-By Truckers songs are written by Cooley and singer/guitarist Patterson Hood, but both of them turned out songs on that album that were jarring in their impact, and resonant even two years later. Generally, the two write their songs separately, and then bring them to the whole band for arrangements. Hood had been the primary songsmith when the band began in 1996, but Cooley's writing has increased over the years, with five of his tunes on "American Band" and six on 2014's "English Oceans" album.

"We each bring pretty much finished products in," Cooley explained of the writing process in the band. "Everyone then plays a part in how we put it together, but I usually have a pretty good idea of how I want to do it. There was no conscious effort to look at topical stuff in 2016, but it was just what we were writing about at the time. That just ended up being what it was, and unfortunately it is still relevant today. It's been good for us – we're still touring behind that album, and it's still selling really well. So it's a kind of a 'good news/bad news' situation."

Among the five tunes Cooley contributed to "American Band," one that has gained more relevance in recent months is "Ramon Cassiano," a song that deals with a Mexican immigrant shot to death in 1931, whose killer eventually went on to head the National Rifle Association. "It all started with the border, And that's still where it is today ..." goes the song.

"Writing about political matters can be tough," said Cooley, "because you never want to feel like you're hitting people over the head with your views. But with 'Ramon Cassiano' I tried to present it as, 'you can feel any way you want, but this is a fact – it happened.' If I'm trying to do anything, that's it. I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, just laying out the true story, and you can do with it whatever you like."

Some of the other Cooley tunes on that 2016 album include the anthemic, fast-paced "Surrender Under Protest," which deals with many Southerners' misguided embrace of The Lost Cause, at the expense of their own progress, and "Filthy and Fried," which portrays the frantic search for meaning in changing times, and the difficulty of adjusting..."everyone claims that the times are a-changing, as theirs pass them by, and everyone's right ..."

But the most memorable Cooley song from "American Band," is "Once They Banned 'Imagine," which seems like an allegory about some dark, imaginary time in the future when John Lennon's classic has been forbidden by some sinister government. Turns out, it's not a bleak fantasy, but was actually based on some little known reality.

"Everything going on today has us forgetting about what has gone before, how we got here, and how that song has become even more relevant, maybe than anything else on the record," Cooley explained. "I wrote this song mainly inspired from seeing a post-9/11 memo that (one of the major radio stations corporations) sent out, where they had a whole big list of songs their stations were recommended NOT to play. The whole idea was just inexplicable to me, that kind of censorship. But there was, when you reviewed the list, a heavy focus on anything anti-war, like 'Imagine.' At that point, we hadn't even talked about invading anyone in response to 9/11, but they were already suppressing any hint of dissent."

"It seemed like things we'd thought we left in the past were never gone," Cooley added. "Now we look and see all these characters from the Nixon Era are back. It's almost like Nixon is still going after John Lennon ... from the grave."

Much of Cooley's other work is more in storytelling mode, where he slips in any social commentary between the lines. The popular rocker from 2014, "Sh*t Shots Count," for example, seems on its surface a wild succession of images from crazy weekends, but there's an undercurrent of the frustrations of working folks ("Sh*t shots count if the table is tilted, Just pay the man who levels the floor ..."). There's a tender family vignette at the base of "Primer Coat," and "Hearing Jimmy Loud" is a sort of tragicomic portrait of a fellow who just can't get his act together, and can't see why women don't stay with him.

Cooley's songs are powerful within the framework of the Drive-By Truckers' visceral blend of alternative country, Southern rock, and garage rock, and they've always – like Hood's songs – had a certain iconoclast and socially conscious element. They have done a couple albums that were more or less concept albums, telling people's stories to make their points. In more recent times both writers have been more obvious with their social and political commentary within the tunes, and Hood's liner notes to "American Band" note that their influence from The Clash is probably coming to the fore.

But performing the songs solo will necessarily put even more emphasis on the lyrics, so Tuesday is a rare chance to hear Cooley's songs. He said the Truckers typically wrap up their touring schedule by Thanksgiving, and he has done these brief solo tours for a couple winters now, although never having played Boston.

"I never have a setlist, and I try to play some stuff that is not always heard with the band," said Cooley. "I may take a general list of songs up with me, as a guide, but I'll pull out whatever feels right, and try to read the audience as I go along."

Cooley as a singer/songwriter is a notion the musician can't quite come to grips with, and he still sees himself as part of a rock band. We asked if he felt his songwriting had gotten any easier, 20 years after Hood and he had moved to Athens, Georgia, and founded the Truckers?

"It's never easy, it never just comes to me," he said. "I started writing my own songs in-between bands, not long after Adam's Housecat (the band Hood and he were in a few years before). The thing that always gets me is that once you're labeled as a 'singer/songwriter,' that's the only thing people think you do. It doesn't matter what else you do, what you do with your instrument. Like Bruce Springsteen is known only as a singer/songwriter, when in fact he's a great guitar player, who plays a lot of the guitar on his records and in concert."

Considering the caliber of guitarist Cooley is in the Drive-By Truckers, his solo shows should quickly remind people he's much more than a singer/songwriter. But the songs hit pretty hard too.